The Place We Ran To
by R.C. McLachlan
Summary: He finds her at the edge of the world. (Bulma/Vegeta, pre-cyborgs)


He finds her at the edge of the world, standing on the ruins of what must have once been a great kingdom, and it's so fitting an image that he doesn't make himself known right away. Instead, he allows himself a moment to look his fill.

If there were still a moon in the sky, it no doubt would dress her in its regard, cast her in marble, adorn her hair in a diadem of silver and precious stone. Clad in the finest offerings of the night, she would be more than her weak bones and diluted blood, more than the gravity that binds her here. A goddess, untethered.

The fragile starlight of the desert is a poor substitute, but she is lovely under its glow all the same.

She stands with a hand propped on her hip, jaunty and almost bored as she surveys the wreckage as if it had been her own doing. She inhales suddenly, shoulders stiffening for only a moment, before she relaxes and blows out her breath. "It's late. All good, little saiyans ought to be asleep."

He bites down on the urge to reduce her to atoms for that. "I could say the same about useless, weak humans."

"Human or not, I'm a scientist," she says, but her gaze is arrested elsewhere, the words a mere formality. Wherever she has gone in her mind, he hasn't been invited to follow. "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

"I can make that happen." He crosses his arms and rises a few feet into the air, drifting over to the ruins on which she stands. He touches down on a slab of stone beside her. Not once has he ever needed an invitation to be anywhere; he's not about to beg for one now.

"If the simulator is broken again, I don't want to hear about it. I'm off the clock."

"It's not my fault you continually give me such a shoddy final product."

That draws her attention. "It's not _my_ fault that your specifications are stupidly vague. I'm working off a prototype that wasn't supposed to see the light of day for a few years. It'd help if you gave me direction on _what exactly you want_ so we don't keep having this conversation," she snarls, and for a breathtaking moment it looks as though she might actually take a swing at him.

The enraged fire in her eyes ignites something in his gut, searing muscle and bone, culling the dead weight of anticipation for the cyborgs and giving him something else to focus on.

She always does, it seems. He spends his mornings, afternoons, and evenings bettering himself in the metal womb she made, and even under the punishing fist of artificial gravity he is aware of her. His skin hums at the mere prospect of her, blood roiling like the moment before a good battle; her body is frail and he could end her life with a twitch of his fingers, but her mind… it's a weapon unlike anything he's ever seen, and he craves to see it in action, even against himself. Especially against himself. It's nothing like his need to crush Kakarot's spine under his heel—the idiot made a fool out of him and must pay for his insolence. She invokes a different sort of hunger, displays to him a new sort of power that he must experience firsthand. It's the kind of opportunity any saiyan would covet. He isn't proud of the way his stomach bottoms out when he catches a glimpse of her hair, of the oil beneath her nails—rusted and black, like blood; but even still, he gladly forsakes his pride.

He thinks of her on Namek and how easily he brushed her off, and wishes not for the first time that he'd had the wherewithal to sneak her into Frieza's ship and gift her with a multitude of technologies and networks just to see what kind of havoc she could wreak.

Studying her out of the corner of his eye, the way she holds herself among the ruins of this odd place, he's almost certain she would have single-handedly brought Frieza's empire to its knees.

When his rebuttal doesn't follow, the fight leaves her, and she blows out another breath. "Why are you here, anyway?"

"For all you whine about needing your sleep, imagine my surprise at hearing your jet leave the premises in the middle of the night."

"So your first instinct was to follow me?"

"My first instinct was to shoot your plane down." He punctuates it with a smirk.

She makes a face. "So… you're here _why_ , exactly?"

"Curiosity," he says truthfully. There is nothing to gain from a half-assed excuse. "I wanted to see what would call your lazy ass out of bed at such an unusual hour."

The expression on her face is one of deep suspicion—he's seen it before on a variety of faces, usually before he does exactly what they expect him to and destroys them, but the sight of it on hers makes him itch. It thankfully melts away as she turns her head to gaze back out over the ruins.

"It's a special night. An anniversary."

He tilts his head. "Of what?"

"Actually, you'll like this," she assures him, grinning faintly, even as the look in her eyes dims with memory. "Fifteen years ago, I saw a saiyan for the first time."

His hand spasms where it curls over his arm and he tucks it against his chest. "Oh?"

"He was unlike anything I'd ever seen." The words are hushed, reverent, coming from far away; from another time. "He looked like a regular kid if you ignored the tail. Just a little boy… and then suddenly he wasn't. It was so perfectly _deceptive_. I'd been looking for proof of something that science couldn't quantify and it had been with me all along. Even as we were running for our lives, all I could think was how everything would change. That the creature Goku had inside of him was as bad as it could get."

She drops her chin and chuckles to herself, shoulders rolling to hunch inward. It makes her look small, vulnerable, and an unexpected flare of anger makes him avert his eyes. This isn't a pose meant for her and she wears it like ill-fitted armor.

"Stupid. There's always worse out there, right? There's always going to be another threat."

He shrugs. "Nothing that I can't handle."

"That kid said the cyborgs killed you. All of you."

"Duly noted," he sneers. "But it isn't going to be a problem."

It won't be. With sufficient time and training, the cyborgs are going to be a blip on his radar. And when he rips them to get down to their base components, he'll bring her the scraps. It'll be the first gift he's ever given a person before blowing up their planet.

"Nothing's certain," she says. "The odds are in your favor, sure, but there's always the probability of—"

"What actually compelled you here tonight?" Because it certainly isn't the anniversary of witnessing an oozaru's rampage.

Her expression is frustratingly blank, lips slack, but he can almost hear the whirring gears in her mind as she continues, softly, as if she hadn't heard him, "There's always the probability that you'll all fail. Which means it will fall to me."

His gut tightens. "In the extremely unlikely event that they would somehow manage to best me, what would you do?"

The smile that pulls at her mouth is a haunted, reluctant thing. "You don't want to know the things I'd do."

He does. He really, really does. He wants to see her war colors, the steadiness of her hands as she sanctions her own, particular brand of destruction. No supernova or star birth could ever rival the image of the world bowing at her feet.

"I'd never thought I'd miss the uncomplicated days where rampaging monkeys were the worst things life could throw at me, but here we are," she sighs. "Frieza, the cyborgs… kids coming from the future. I mean, where does it end?"

There's an odd pressure at the back of his throat and he clears it, too loud in the otherwise silent desert. "With me destroying this utter waste of a planet. That'll be your uncomplicated day."

She cracks a grin. "Don't say you never did anything for me, huh?"

"Keep my good will to yourself, bitch."

"Your secret's safe with me, asshole."

There are billions and billions of women throughout the universe—different colors, creeds, species—alluring in their own ways, and he has enjoyed their bodies when the chances presented themselves. But never more than once or twice, and never for anything other than to sate his hunger.

He thinks he could be full for years, supping on the mere sight of the smile his very real threat brought to her face. That she can meet him blow for blow and find solace in his menace shouldn't be as thrilling as it is.

Lifting her chin, she squares her shoulders and gestures to the rubble littering the desert floor, her eyes sharp in the pale light, glinting with the promise of danger and blood. His body sings to see it. "This sort of thing must be old hat to you."

"Not really. There's always a new angle to be found in destruction."

She looks at him for a long moment and then shifts her weight onto her other leg. It brings her close enough for their arms to rest lightly against each other.

He doesn't move away. Neither does she.

It's the most beautiful declaration of war he's ever witnessed.


End file.
